


Dedecus

by DaScribbla



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Codependency, Dubious Consent, F/M, Ghosts, Sibling Incest, Slut Shaming, Spiders Mention, femdom-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 05:25:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5772988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There would be trouble -- Thomas knew it from the moment she hid her face in his shoulder at the sight of her father’s body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dedecus

**Author's Note:**

> *sounds of my morals smashing in the distance* ANOTHER!

_“... Though thou writ’st maid, thou whore in thy affection,_

_‘Twas chang’d from thy first love, and that’s a kind_

_of whoredom in thy heart…”_

Thomas Middleton, _The Changeling_

 

 

He never intended such a blunder. 

It was a mistake, and one that he wishes never to repeat, if he can help it. He can help it. He must. 

There would be trouble -- Thomas knew it from the moment she hid her face in his shoulder at the sight of her father’s body. It was nearly enough to make him feel guilt at instigating the old man’s death. For one wild moment, he wonders how she doesn’t scent the blood on him. Then he remembers that it was Lucille who carried out the deed. But he was the reason, regardless.

Edith presses her cheek against his chest and he smells something floral, like roses or mock orange, in her hair. He would inhale, but it doesn’t seem tactful, given the time and place. Instead, he settles for kissing her forehead. He doesn’t miss the eyes of Doctor McMichael rest on them for a moment before tearing away and focusing on the corpse before him. Edith’s small hand finds his own and the thought flits through his brain.

_This is dangerous._

The wedding and everything that comes after makes Thomas feel as though he dances on a knife point. His new wife is clearly dissatisfied with his insistence on keeping apart at night. His excuses become more and more erratic. 

_You’re still grieving, love._

_There’s no rush._

_When the time is right._

_We have all the time in the world, don’t we?_

Throughout the short honeymoon, the lack of Lucille’s presence wears him down. He needs her there with him, or he feels unsure of himself. Even Edith notices his behavior, particularly when he begins skipping meals. She brings food herself to his train cabin and sits there until she’s satisfied that he’s eaten enough. It’s something that Lucille would do, and that’s comforting to him.

When they arrive at the house at last, he is so relieved to see his sister again that he all but falls into her arms, sighing at their reunion and the sensation of her hand stroking his hair. While on the honeymoon, he missed the reassurance of her authority. Lucille knew what to do. Lucille would keep them both safe. 

Oh, how he’s missed her.

He wonders if they share dreams as they lie together that night. 

The familiar surge of shame returns as he carefully slides back into bed with his wife. She’s clearly freezing, sleeping with the covers pulled tight around her. Her blonde hair spills over the pillow. After a moment of hesitation, he places a soft kiss in those curls, where she will not feel it. 

He feels sullied because of it, like a whore. A whore of the shadows, where none will know it but himself. 

 

She never forces him. There is that. But she _is_ quietly determined. If her husband fears he will intrude on her grief, she seems to think, then she will show him it is no intrusion at all. She often stands close, her hand on his arm with a finger just brushing his vein. Her breath is gentle on his skin. She wants him badly, he can see it, but he will not give in. No matter his own feelings.

He nearly loses control once, in his workshop. Who kissed who, he doesn’t know and -- at least for a little while -- doesn’t care. Edith’s lips are like rose petals, or some equally purple simile. Thomas does not have her writer’s gift for choosing the best words; he lives in hyperbole and over-complicated metaphor. Feelings slipping every which way. With her clarity of expression, she can complete him. That floral scent is in his nose again, and the brush of her satin sleeves against his jaw and his neck are amorous appeals. He longs to devour her. That thought reminds him of a children’s tale. The wolf and the girl in the misty wood.

Lucille arrives before he can do anything he truly regrets. He is relieved, of course, but… there is disappointment, too. He feels Lucille’s eyes on him and immediately his lips burn.

 

Late that night, or rather early that morning, Lucille confronts him about the scene in the workshop. 

“She initiated,” he says softly. “She’ll have so little in the end. Why not grant her this one favor, I thought.”

“You’re too kind-hearted,” Lucille says with a smile, touching his face. Her thumb strokes a point beneath his left eye. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Oh, Lucille. You know that I always love a kiss.”

She hums and takes that as an invitation to love, and Thomas falls backward onto her bed, his sister in his arms. 

“Do I not do it better than her?” she asks, hair curtaining her face. Her eyes are dark and remind Thomas of small galaxies. 

“You’ve been at it longer,” he replies and can hear her sigh of relief as her hands make their inevitable journey downwards. They’ve resigned themselves to hands and mouths since the last year or so -- since the baby, really.

Climaxes are all too brief. They lie on Lucille’s bed, heartbeats slowing to a normal and identical pace, and watch the first snowflakes fall past the window. 

_Perhaps,_ Thomas thinks, _the snow will cool whatever madness this is._

 

When he makes the offer of a room at the post office, he cannot say what possessed him. It’s all-too-easy to segue into something he may never forgive himself for. Part of him prays that she’ll refuse. Part of him prays that she will not.

“Let’s take the room,” she whispers, and Thomas knows instinctively that there is no escape this time. It’s terrifying to him how easy it is to obey her. She can coax things from him that he’d never intended to say. A sweet smile, and it’s suddenly it feels natural to want to touch her. To love her the way she deserves. 

But he holds the thought at a distance, the way one might hold a burning coal. With trepidation and the knowledge of potential disaster.

She is looking up at him from where she lies on the bed and gives him another smile. Turns her head to press her cheek against his thigh. The touch is so familiar he nearly jumps. He wants to flee the room. He wants to stay. 

_You’re still grieving, love._

_There’s no rush._

_When the time is right._

Her flesh and hair are golden in the firelight and he reaches down -- merely to test if she’s real, he tells himself -- and brushes a finger against her lips. 

_When the time is right._

The time is _now._

Somehow a single caress magnifies into a mess of mouths and hands and suddenly he’s giddy, as if he’s downed champagne by the bottle. He pushes her skirts up, admiring how those seemingly light layers yield to their own weight, and kisses her thighs. He’s afraid to go any further. But he feels Edith’s small hands on his shoulder and so is drawn back into her arms. The earth tumbles and spins and suddenly she’s above him, and sinking around him. There is nothing in his world but her.

_The wolf and the girl in the wood,_ he thinks. But he cannot tell who has bared their teeth, and who has given up their virginity against a hollow tree. 

He finishes with a gasp and collapses back against the pillow. She follows quickly and rolls onto the bed beside him with a contented sigh. Snow is sailing past their window and it’s then that Thomas notices how cold he is. He crosses his arms over his bare chest, shivering, and looks around the room. His clothes are strewn across the bed and over the floor. 

Edith pulls the covers over him and then climbs under herself, nestling close. Her lips graze his jaw, making their way to suck on his earlobe. Making a noise in his throat, Thomas turns away sharply, ignoring the new warmth in his belly. Sense has returned at last, carrying with it a host of other emotions. Anger. Regret. Self-disappointment.

“Thomas?”

He looks back at her, seeing her perplexed expression, and takes pity on her.

“I’m sorry, love.”

And he puts his arms around her, lets her hands wander over his body, and lets her escort them both into oblivion for the second time.

Later that night, when she is asleep at his side, Thomas digs his nails into his upper arm and squeezes his eyes shut against the pain.

_Wicked, wicked, wicked._

 

“Where are you going?” Edith’s voice comes from the other side of the bed. Around them, the house groans like an echo of her question. It’s been a day since they returned from the village. Thomas halts at the bedroom door.

“I can’t sleep,” he says. It’s true enough.

“Neither can I,” she says. “It wouldn’t disturb me if you wanted to talk for a while, perhaps…” 

“Talking will only make me more awake,” he says shortly and all but bolts, shutting the door on his wife.

There are no words dirty enough to describe how he feels as he mounts the stairs to Lucille’s bedroom. _Sullied_ sounds too dignified, somehow. Stained perhaps. Ruined. Soiled.

_Just choose,_ a voice in his head whispers.

_But I can’t choose on my own! Someone must be there to help me!_

He thinks back to the boy he had been, who had lain in the bed in the attic, weeping from the nightmares that had tormented his slumbering hours yet again. 

_“Lucy, don’t leave me! I’m afraid without you! I need you by my side!”_

He hears the unmistakable sound of footsteps behind him, and turns sharply, praying that Edith has not decided to follow him. But it is not Edith. There is nothing to see, but the footsteps only grow nearer, until they sound inches from where he stands. He jerks backwards, but is not far enough away to escape the caress of clammy fingers over his cheek. The scent of blood hangs heavy in the air, enough that he feels he may choke on it. 

Something is whispered in his ear, a voice that still makes him freeze in terror after all these years.

_“Wicked, ungrateful child.”_

He is paralyzed there on the stairs, as the footsteps continue up the stairs and then fade into nothing. The darkness is oppressive around him, like a cocoon. His gorge rises and it takes all his effort to keep from vomiting. There is a moment of fresh air, and then the blood scent fills his nose again. He gasps out loud as a pair of hands run along the back of his neck, the sensation oily and macabre. Another word spoken by another voice, but this one no less familiar. Pamela.

_“Whore.”_

The touch leaves him and he slumps over across the railing as if dropped there, staring numbly into the void that was the great hall. Snow is still falling from that damned hole in the ceiling. Feeling more ill than ever, he slowly sits down on the top step and wraps his arms around himself, rocking back and forth with his eyes closed.

_Whore whore whore whore whore…_

The word hurt all the worse because he knew it to be true. No longer in the shadows. He is alone in this darkness, but his sin was committed in firelight, with no way to hide. Naked and shameless, at least where it showed. 

When another pair of hand touch his shoulders, he jumps and nearly tumbles down the stairs in the process. But these hands are human and he recognizes his sister after a moment.

“Come along,” she whispers, sliding her hands across his chest. She does not ask him why he sits there, and he does not intend to tell her. He couldn’t say for certain why himself. There is so little of which he is certain, in this world. 

“Come along,” she says again. He can do nothing but obey, and so allows himself to be led into Lucille’s bedroom. There is a long period of silence in which Lucille wanders throughout her chamber, running her hands across the backs of chairs and across shelves, and Thomas sits on their bed. After a moment, she opens up the drawers of the tiny chest on her dressing table and removes one of the locks of hair she took from the other wives. He recognizes it to be Enola’s. He imagines his sister snipping one of Edith’s golden curls, and the thought privately sickens him.

“You look ill, Thomas,” she says, watching him in the mirror. He sees himself nod.

“I don’t feel well, no.”

More silence. Lucille is studying the lock of hair, twisting it this way and that, admiring it in the candlelight. Thomas waits in apprehension for her to voice what was surely coming. Finally, she speaks again.

“Did you _enjoy_ it?” There is as much acid in the question as there is grief. Thomas buries his head in his hands. “Was she as delectable as you’d thought?”

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he says softly.

“ _Did_ you?” He looks up at her and sees a tear glimmer its way down her cheeks.

“Yes,” he says helplessly. “I wanted her. I’ve never been able to lie to you, Lucy. You know that --”

She kisses him to silence him, pressing her lips against his so hard they feel as though they draw blood. He whimpers once as she presses him back into the mattress, but that is the end of it. His words stick in his throat as she pulls up the skirt of her nightdress and are translated as a single broken gasp when she mounts him, and they shake and weep through their union. Practicality tossed aside.  

_Whore whore whore._

He opens his eyes and Lucille is watching him with pain in her eyes, her hands gripping his upper arms so hard her fingers feel like stone cutting into his skin. He feels he deserves it. 

They hold each other when it’s all over, each apologizing for any number of things. Thomas is out of breath, and cannot help feeling used. He rubs his cheek against Lucille’s shoulder. She lets him sleep.

 

He has grown accustomed to lying with death, in whatever capacity. Whether it coughs and struggles for breath on the pillow beside his, or whether it sleeps cold and apparently dormant with one hand on his chest. Was there ever a time in his life when he did not know violence? Were they alive, his parents would say no. 

He continues visiting Lucille because it is the last certainty he can cling to. Even if that’s merely the certainty of his own confusion.

 

The moon reflects off the snow and and so Lucille’s chamber is bathed in pale light. Asleep against his shoulder, Lucille’s lips just brush his skin. The entire room has an unearthly look, as though they’ve risen to the stars and if he were to rise and look out the window, he thinks he’d find an alien world. His arms ache where Lucille gripped him earlier. She’s grown rougher of late, as if fearing that he will vanish from beneath her.

The white linen of her nightdress is spread across the bed in frothy folds, spilling across his left leg. Lucille is offering him his only modesty. The cold makes his bare skin break out in gooseflesh, but he doesn’t try to pull the covers over them. That could wake Lucille, and he has done enough to her already. So he nestles closer to her, and smiles weakly as she sighs in sleep. He has to show her how much he needs to be with her.

A flicker of movement catches his eye and he looks to the wall -- a shape peeling itself from the shadow of the wardrobe and creeping slowly along. Slithering steadily towards him. His breath stops, but he makes no sound. Watching the shade move closer and closer on the wall before him, set in sharp relief by the moonlight. Something that is clearly a long-fingered hand reaching out to where he knows he lies...

He feels the same oily touch from the stairs brushing down his cheek and along the curve of his throat. It feels the way water feels beneath the surface. He blinks and for a split second he sees something hanging in the darkness above him -- black and red, hair twisting like seaweed the color of blood, long limbs stretched out for him -- and the vision was gone. Another blink. Now the apparition is stretching out her spindle-arms like an enormous bird of prey, and somewhere a baby is shrieking --

“Thomas?” Lucille’s arms encircling him. Safe. He is safe. “You cried out.”

“I saw her,” he mutters. 

“Who, love?”

“Enola.” He feels clammy, nauseous. Delirious almost. “I saw Enola. It must have been her because -- there was -- the baby.” He feels sicker than he can ever remember being before. 

“A nightmare. Nothing more.” Lucille kissing his forehead. Lucille rubbing circles into his shoulders as he presses closer. No clothes, and all shame. “I am here, and I will face them so you don’t have to. Soon this will be over,” she whispers, leaning her cheek against the top of head. “Edith is our last, remember? We’ll never have to do it again. Be strong for me, love. Just a little longer and then we can live again. The way we always meant to.”

He nods miserably and lets her sing him into sleep. 

But as he sleeps, he sees the ghosts of all the women they’d felled crawling over his own sleeping form, like red spiders on their silk-bound prey.

 

Another night. Another lullaby. 

“I know,” she murmurs, seeing his dejected expression. Her weight settles in his lap. “I know how you hurt. I’m here. It’ll all turn out alright. You’ll see.” Thomas kisses her shoulder as she begins to hum. It all feels better when she sings to him. He can become a little boy again, and let her save him from the night terrors.

A flash of white in his peripheral vision makes him look up, and with a pang of horror and shame, he meets his wife’s gaze.

_I think I wanted you to think me good._

He half expects her to scream, or to hurl the same word at him as the apparition on the stairwell, but she merely turns away and her sobs echo after her. 

_Whore._

Since no one says it aloud, he thinks it for them.

Lucille pushes herself off his knees and follows, calling to her. He wants to tell her to let Edith be, but he does nothing. He is powerless in everything that happens after. He has been powerless all his life. 

Lucille rips the ring from Edith’s finger and wastes no time in pushing her backward, the banister breaking under her weight. Thomas watches. There is nothing to be done. He can almost feel himself pitching over the side in Edith’s place. 

His sister turns and seems to sense his feelings. 

“She would have ruined us,” she murmurs, as a hollow thump sounds below. “Oh, Thomas. It’s alright. I’m here.” She lets him cling to her.

“Is this who we are?” he murmurs in her shoulder.

“This is who we’ve always been.”

“But we’ve become _them._ Mother and Father.” _And Edith is still lying there._ “Violence begets violence.”

“No.” She strokes his hair, looking at him with tenderness. “We are not like them, I promise. Nothing like them.”

“You’ll never hurt me. The way he did her?”

“Never. I could never hurt you.” She swallows. “You are all that I have.”

And Edith is still lying there.

“She was _innocent_ ,” he murmurs, and Lucille sighs, a look of regret crossing her face as she nods.

“They all were.”

It’s all that can be said.

They hold each other in the darkness, and Thomas feels his heart beating his own ribcage, in Lucille’s chest pressed against his own, in Edith’s broken body in the snow on the floor beneath them. Pulled in three directions. 

The house groans, and Lucille is still holding him, along with all his cares, all his sins. His promiscuity thrown in with the rest. Snow is still falling, and it falls on Edith’s broken body. Part of her sleeve flutters like a butterfly caught in winter. Thomas counts his heartbeats one by one, as if they will cease after a certain number, and endures his shame again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr @williamshakennotstirred if you'd like to chat!


End file.
